Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Context

Written in 1970 but not published till 1976, Mauser
represents the culmination of Heiner Müller’s long preoccupation
with Brecht’s Lehrstücke [learning plays] and remains his
most confronting and provocative play. Like Brecht’s Die
Massnahme [The Measures Taken, 1930], of which it is
both a critique and a development, the play was effectively banned
in the GDR. It presented the problem of revolutionary violence and
terror during the period of war communism and civil war in Russia
in such an uncompromising manner that it threatened the party’s
efforts to “move on” from the earthquake caused by Kruschchev’s
condemnation of Stalin at the twentieth Party Congress. The GDR
leadership at this time …